Water Minister Graham Jacobs announced today that anyone now caught using their Garden Sprinklers on the wrong days would be issued with an on-the-spot $100 Fine.

Dr. Jacobs said that for the past nine years all customers who breached the rules were issued with a warning first and any further breach would then attract a fine.

“Since the one-day-a-week sprinkler roster came into effect on October 1, 1,385 warnings and 119 fines have been issued.” the Minister said.

“This means that clearly a significant minority of people have not got the message that we need to save all the water we can ahead of this summer.”

The Minister said the current water situation was extremely serious and while the majority of people did the right thing, those that did not needed to be brought to task.

“Perth’s water use has been 17 % above the target most days this spring, and peaked on Sunday (October 17).” the Minister said.

“We must do everything possible to rein in use and the time has come to issue immediate fines to those who flout the rules.”

Dr. Jacobs said it was a fact that the south-west corner of the State had just experienced its worst winter on record and with dam levels at about 34 %, it was now more important than ever not to waste water unnecessarily.

“To put this into perspective, even in the extremely rainfall deficient years of 2001 and 2006, in-flow to our dams was more than 30 Billion litres. This year we’ve had only Six Billion litres.” the Minister said.

“This has presented us with a major water management challenge and we need to use all the demand management options available to their maximum.”

The Minister said he expected to make an announcement soon on whether any changes to the summer water efficiency measures would be necessary.